


Statement Ends

by ClassicCannibalism



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 02:24:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20858678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassicCannibalism/pseuds/ClassicCannibalism
Summary: Statement of Ayesha Mansoor given October of 2008, regarding the strange process of writing her autobiography.





	Statement Ends

**Author's Note:**

> I've only listened to about the intervention scene in the middle of season 2 so this won't adhere to the rest of the podcast. This is also my first time writing fanfic and this came pouring out one evening. If you find any problems, please address them politely and I will fix them. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Statement of Ayesha Mansoor given October of 2008, regarding the process of writing her autobiography. Recorded firsthand. Statement begins:

My son asked me to start writing my autobiography because he thought people would like to hear about my life; and apparently, only I could tell my tragedy with as much oomph and humour as any of my other novels. Mind you, this was back in 2006 and I did start it you see, I just don’t remember ending it. 

My life before it was standardly tragic; you know, casual tragedies that you read about in books. That’s how I coped with it, or so my therapist said when I finally went to see one in my late twenties. Regular old teenage orphan moving from foster home to foster home. Some were obviously better than others but nothing so bad that I couldn’t recover from it. Anyway, books got me through it, and I started writing my own stuff at 16 and was published for a short story anthology by 21. Pretty successful. I wrote what I knew, obviously, things I knew about, had experienced but never directly, never completely. 

So in August 2006, I had just finished writing my last book and was itching to start again. I never had a problem writing things but when I finished that book and handed it over, I was somewhere between euphoric and devastated because I had nothing else to write about. It was weird, not already having a story being created in the back of my head. I was in that state for about two months and my son, -Iqbal- who was 21 at the time got sick of my moping and told me to write about my tragedies. That’s how he talked about my life, as a great dramatic tragedy; psychology majors, you know. Anyway, I had no better idea and I had been injecting my stories with events from my life anyway, so I thought I’d give it a try. I wasn’t going to publish it or anything, mostly I was just doing it to have something to bloody write about and I was hoping this exercise would give me some idea on what to write about next.

Anyway, the day after Iqbal went back to his dorms for the semester, I decided to just do it. I had had no better ideas since then and it was gnawing at me. I went into my study where I usually write, its my space filled with my books, my reference books, and the books that I love to read. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of books. My desk sits beside a large bay window that opens up to the field behind my house. It’s a mahogany table, I know this because Ashur, my friend built it in front of me. Sorry, I know these are details you probably don’t want, but they are important. Its interesting how the little details become so important, you know? It’s the details that convince you you’re going mad. 

So, I started to write. This was a weird experience for me. I always first write the climax, then the conclusion and ending and then I write the beginning and the middle of the story. It isn’t a ritual or method I employ; it’s just what works for me. But obviously, I couldn’t do it with this. I didn’t know the ending yet. So, I started to write, from my very first memory and onwards. I didn’t think I would be able to write it as fast as I did but I had about two notebooks filled in a week, and I’d only reached my seventh birthday. By then, I was in my writing frenzy again, I had adrenaline rushing in my veins and a reason to get up early in the morning again. I also forgot my original reason for writing and was intent on finishing it.

It was September 24th , I remember rather distinctly, because the day before I had scheduled myself a day of no writing. I do this occasionally, it’s a learned trait that my husband instilled in me while he was alive so that I would survive even when I was in my frenzy. It was a day every two weeks to go get groceries, cook, and just do general domestic chores that I had neglected previously. It was essentially a break for me and my poor hands. It was a warm sunny day; it was a good day. On the 24th, I went into my study to write once more, my frenzy hadn’t slowed and neither had my writing, but I had the oddest feeling that something was off. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but it was weird that day, sitting at my desk, in my study, in my home, and writing. Something had changed and I just couldn’t pinpoint it. I thought maybe I was having an off day, but the feeling was back the next day. I first realized it when I started tapping on my table with my pen, trying to figure out how to phrase something when I noticed that the sound my desk made was different. The tapping sounded hollower, lighter than it usually does. Mahogany is a heavy wood, when you tap on it, it makes a dull thud, not this knocking that I heard. I just thought maybe I heard it wrong because it was late, and I was tired. I tapped it again, but it was still a knock on the wood. I just thought it was weird, but it was still my writing desk, I was too tired to think too hard on it. The next morning, I tapped the desk again, but the sound was back to normal. I wrote it off as tiredness. 

It was normal for another week or so when that feeling started coming back. I had finished another notebook by then. The first day that feeling back, I didn’t notice what was wrong. The second day, I did. It was the beginning of October and I live in Florida, its 30 degrees there then, weather doesn’t change much but, in my window, the leaves were all bright red an orange, it looked like the most picturesque fall day ever. I thought I was just seeing things, so I went back downstairs and looked out my kitchen window, everything was normal and green and brown. No hint to red or orange anywhere. I went back to my study, and my window was still red and orange. You know, when you encounter something inexplicable, you tend to rationalize it? Well, my childhood taught me to pretend it didn’t exist. That day, I took my notebook and sat in my backyard to write. Progress was very slow that day, so the next, I went back to my study and everything was normal again. 

By the week after, I remember I was writing about my foster homes. Some of the places had been strange, you know, look-the-other-way kind of strange. I came to the conclusion that I was seeing things because I was jogging weird things in my memory my writing about them. I was just having flashbacks. 

But then, something changed again, something big. I told you my study is full of bookcases and books. One morning I went to my study and there was nothing in there but my desk and the window and the notebooks I’d already written in, all lined up lying on the floor. All my books and the bookcases that were bolted to the floor were gone. As if there had been nothing there to begin with. There was no discoloration of the tiles to indicate they had been there. But you know what the strangest thing about that was? I had been in that study since six in the morning, and I only noticed when my stomach started making noise from hunger and the clock read five thirty-seven p.m. I spent close to twelve hours in that room without noticing that some of my most precious possessions were missing. 

I bolted out of that room and into my kitchen. I didn’t know what was happening anymore. Nothing like this had happened when I wrote fiction. Either I was really hallucinating and going out of my mind or someone had come into my home and taken my things. My freak out after that was a little stronger, a little longer. But when I calmed a little more, I went to check my room for my valuables, my jewelry was all still there, as was the 5000 dollars cash I kept stashed under my bed, my wallet, my dresses, my passport, it was all still there. Nothing else had been taken. Then I remembered the window, how could someone stealing do that? I ended up not calling the police, I had nothing to show for it. Couldn’t write for four days after that, couldn’t go into the study at all. And when I did go back because I couldn’t not write anymore, everything was back to normal. 

I went back to writing, the notebooks started piling, but nothing strange seemed to happen for a while after that. I think later on I realized that I scared whatever was doing it. It didn’t want me to stop writing and when I did, it stopped doing strange things so that it wouldn’t distract me. I don’t know what it is, even if it is a thing or not, but it wanted me to finish my story as much as I wanted to finish it. I think at least a month passed before something strange happened again. I wrote so much in that time that I think I was almost at my forties by then when the next strange thing happened. I keep the notebooks (of which there were at least 6 I might add) I am writing in usually stashed in a single shelf in the bookcase closest to my desk. This morning, they were all gone. All of them, just gone, poof, as if they never existed. Months of my life, my history, all gone. I looked everywhere in the study for them, they were nowhere. Then I went looking in the house. I didn’t find any of them. I think I was quite hysterical by then, I went back into my study and sat at my desk looking though it again. When I looked at the shelf again, there was a leather-bound book there; it was a book I had never seen before. It was just lying where my missing notebooks had been. I couldn’t have missed it before, nothing had been there. I very carefully picked it up. It felt like genuine leather, but not like new leather, it felt like old weathered skin like when you grab your grandmamma’s hand and her skin moves across her hand with little pressure from your fingers. I opened it and found writing in it. When I started reading, I realized it was my notebook, all my notebooks, all my writings for the autobiography contained in one book that I hadn’t seen before. 

But by then, I had given up figuring out what was happening and just kept writing. Mind you, I wasn’t writing in the leather-bound book but in other notebooks, which would disappear every night with the writing appearing in the leather-bound book. I kept writing in notebooks though. I don’t know why. 

It was one day when I started writing about Iqbal telling me I should write about my life that I realized I was almost done. It was early morning that day and I think I wrote until after midnight before I was completely done. I wrote until I had caught up to that day’s happenings. I wrote about all the strange things that happened around me during my writing. And then I went to bed. 

The next day when I came to my study and had nothing to write, I took my writings and started editing them. Conveniently, they had been compiled into one furnished book, so I went paragraph by paragraph and page by page. It took days to edit even a notebook’s worth of writings and it never occurred to me that such a small book could contain so many pages. I kept editing for days on end until once again I was almost at the end of my writings. I think I had two-three pages left when I decided to call it a day. When I came back the next day and was almost to the end when I realized I had written more.

The writing didn’t end when I reached the last day of writing. I decided I must have continued writing even after I started editing so I got to editing what I had left. The writing continued… until it was addressing today I found more writing. I couldn’t have written that; I didn’t even have a notebook in which to write it, and how could I have written about my confusion about writing before I was confused about it. I was becoming more and more alarmed; I continued to read and edit… and it kept going. It talked about the day I would finish editing the whole of the autobiography, a man would come to buy it from me, and I would give it to him. I kept reading. It talked about me forgetting my past, my writing the book would become foggy. I remember reading that. It kept going, I read many things in that book, things only I could have written but about a future I hadn’t lived. And then, I finally reached the end. I don’t know how long it had been since I realized; hours certainly, probably days. After all, it was a long life I lived. And then I died. I read about that too, how it would happen, why, who would do it. I read about my death, and my funeral. I remember all of that, I remember everything that would happen to me after the book left my possession. And I remember… I remember that that was exactly what happened. I read about coming here and here I am. I read about how Iqbal would get married, who he would marry even though he hasn’t met him yet. I’ve read about our falling out, the American Blitz, my house bombed, and then dying. I read about all of that. Until now, its been exactly how it was written. I don’t know if it will continue. I hope not but with the way things are going, its likely. 

Anyway, I figured I should come here and tell you about everything, I would do that anyway so… here I am. 

Sorry. I just had the oddest epiphany that this might be the only time I’ve written about my own life that I actually bloody remember. You’ll notice that I couldn’t give you a good idea of what I was writing about, but that’s because I don’t remember most of it anymore. Not the writing, I remember the writing, I don’t remember my past anymore. What I do remember is that I knew it before I wrote about it, and when the man bought the book, my memories disappeared. It took them, the book. 

Gertrude: Sorry darling, but do you remember what you named the book?

Oh, ummm… let me think… 

Gertrude: You don’t remember it?

No, no, I do. I named it before and its in my diary, one second. 

Ah yes, it was called “Tragoediae” It means The Tragedies in English.

Gertrude: You wrote it in Latin?

Uhhh… I… shouldn’t have? Most of my books are in English, it… should’ve been in English… I don’t even know Latin. Sorry. 

Gertrude: That’s alright darling. I have another question if you don’t mind answering? A man came to you to pick up the book? Who was it? Do you remember?

Oh yes, of course. His name was something… Germanic or Scandinavian or something like that… uh… Berger? …Bergen?

Gertrude: …Do you mean Jurgen? Was his name Jurgen Leitner by any chance?

Yes! Yes, that’s who it was!

Gertrude: …I see. Is there anything else to add, my dear?

Oh, yes, something strange, I don’t know if it matters much but when Iqbal came home for Christmas vacation, he said he didn’t tell me to write an autobiography, that he knew I wasn’t comfortable with it and he wouldn’t ask that of me.

I was so determined and focused on finishing the book that the book had finished me.

Gertrude: End statement. Well this was certainly interesting. Ms. Mansoor has written many books about tragic lives. And I see Jurgen Leitner bought the book. How did he know she was even writing one? Did he know what it was about? …On the other hand, nobody deserves to know how they will die, the poor dear. 

Jonathan Simms: Supplement: most of what Ms. Mansoor talked about isn’t verifiable so there is no way to know if it is true. I asked Martin to do follow up statement, but Ms. Mansoor firmly declined to do so. Tim was able to get into contact with Mr. Iqbal Mansoor but he could not verify what his mother went through as he was in university at the time and had very little contact with her. 

And we’re back to Jurgen Leitner and his books, except this time it’s in a much more horrifying manner. …If what Ms. Mansoor wrote was the type of book to become an original Jurgen Leitner book, that means more of those horrifying books are being written and more are being circulated all the time. And to read about everything that will happen in her life before it will happen, I don’t even know what to think. End Supplement.

**Author's Note:**

> The Latin is from the wise google, forgive me.


End file.
